While we don't live there, I work in Southlake, TX and there are quite a few local places that do gluten free. We decided to check out the Mellow Mushroom and see how their pizza stacked up against the few local places we've found.
The restaurant itself is cute and family friendly despite the not-so-subtle decor and illicit 70's inspiration. It was clean and colorful and had a VW wagon that had been converted into booths that kids seem to love. We started off with drinks and I was happy to see that they offered not only wine and cider (several varieties for a change) but also several types of gluten-free beer! One of the drinks they offered was the Omission Pale Ale and, having tried Omission before and been less than impressed I decided to give one of the others a go. I opted for the Green's Discovery Amber Ale at random and was fairly pleased with the result. Not too bitter and not fruity, not too light, just a nice simple beer that I thought went well with pizza. I haven't been able to sell other people on gluten-free beers the way I can sometimes on GF foods. Maybe that says something about the quality we've reached with the foods, or the lack on a lot of the beers.
We started with a salad, caprese style because my hubby and I are suckers for it. It was fresh, large enough to share and had a nice balsamic dressing. I'll be honest, I didn't double check on the GF factor of the salad because my husband ordered it, and I just ended up sharing, but I had no adverse reactions.
We opted for the Kosmic Karma pizza, it's a vegetarian as well as gluten-free option that included both fresh and sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, mozarella and feta. I don't often eat vegetarian I just happen to like tons of veggies and more cheese is always a plus to me. The pesto swirl was visually pleasing but also very tasty. It made for a very nice picture - how thoughtful of them - and even my husband had no complaints about the (no meat, no wheat) dinner.
The crust had a good flavor but was definitely the crispy thin-crust style that I know a lot of Celiacs lament. I didn't find it's overly crisp though so I didn't mind the thinness. Over all I really enjoyed my visit to this restaurant. The staff was friendly and fast and the food and drinks were satisfying.
I would say that there is only two big down sides to this pizza place that keep me from being a regular. First, the price point is a little high for me but then again, it is in Southlake so that says something. Secondly, this place sort of fell down on the dessert front which is surprising given how well they did with everything else. The hubby ordered pretzels because he lives for cinnamon sugar and that was one of their options. The serving of this was HUGE (like, silly) and yet they had NO gluten-free options at all. I asked about just getting ice cream which they agreed to bring me without a problem. However, when it came it was a scoop of vanilla and a mini single serve of chocolate brownie Ben & Jerry's in a cup. Clearly the gluten-free factor of that had not been considered despite it being clear that it was the reason I had requested just ice cream. Even though it was strange to get one in a package and one a bowl it ended up being for the best because I could send back the Brownie ice cream and just eat the vanilla.
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